Bishop Sean Teal, Visionary

The Law of the Band-Aid

The Law of the Band-Aid

“…But we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” (I Corinthians 15:51-52).

Have you ever heard of “The Law of the Band-Aid” ? When I was growing up on 8th and Florida Streets in Richmond, California I received multiple scrapes and cuts while being a boy in an urban neighborhood. The only thing worse than the wounds was the removal of a Band-Aid. Band-Aid removal was dreaded. Band-Aid removal can be a slow, tortuous, painful hair-pulling experience.

The best way to remove a Band-Aid is one quick rip! Change is the same way. The slower we make the changes we need to make the more painful our experience will be. There is no value in prolonging the pain of change. The longer we resist change, things will only get worse, not better.

Long delays, drawn out decision-making, prolonged indecision, traditional protocols and bloated bureaucracies destroy the positive initiatives of ministry. People who don’t want the vision to succeed will just try to “wait out the clock”. It gives negative people the time and space they want and need to create widespread resistance to the change.

Visionary churches have learned how to prayerfully make progress by deciding and then doing vision in a timely fashion. Great churches have leaders with vision and passion. The leaders bring strategy and urgency to ministry. Strategy is light. Urgency is heat. Some people will never see the light, they need to feel the heat.

You don’t win support for the new and improved by dragging it out. When things are happening slowly in a church and in change people assume incompetence. The idea is, if they knew what we were doing they would have done it by now. That may not be the case. It may be as simple as the fear to remove the Band-Aid.

Change is not what people dislike. People dislike the pain of change. Change that suits us and supports us painlessly is the change we seek. Some change is not what we want, it is what we need. The changes we lead in church are necessary for future ministry.

Leaders! You don’t have to make some changes unnessarily drawn out and therefore more painful. Trying to work with the “powers that want to be” you are perhaps spending too much valuable time seeking consensus and not enough time going after progress. You could be further and farther along in your God-given vision if you better communicate the importance of the changes you know have to be made.

In 2017 bring clear and specific action plans that will provide immediate and impactful progress. Focus on underwriting missions and enhancing the worship and Word experience for different cultures and all generations. This is the time to decide it and then get it done!

Rip. Sting. Done! That is how you remove a Band-Aid and that is how you get big and bold things done. Does it hurt? Will you feel it? Yes! It just doesn’t hurt as bad.